


what happened after

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-03
Updated: 2011-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-20 01:59:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/207579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>pet theory for why john would look so happy after his friend just died</p>
            </blockquote>





	what happened after

_You never really get used to dying_ , he thinks as he rises through what feels like syrup.  Thick, black syrup, or maybe tar, except it glitters, there are shimmering lights in the direction he’s retreating from, glimmering ephemeral green and blue and pink and yellow and it’s awfully pretty and effortless down there.  Not like this forced trudge back into the land of the living yet again where he knows he’s only going to die again, he’s going to have to worry and be afraid again.

 

     But despite the difficulty there, difficulty he doesn’t really understand since he doesn’t think he really had a choice in this matter—he just kind of started floating back up, like he’d done a cannonball into a fathomless pool and now he’s on his way back to the surface—he’s cheerful enough as he ascends, if such a light and airy word can be ascribed to a climb that makes him tremble with exertion at his very core, which he guesses only makes sense if he doesn’t technically have a body to persevere with.  He puts in his best effort in spite of it all, and really it’s not so bad, it’s almost like he’s being buoyed up on a breeze so it could be worse, and he guesses he wasn’t really ready to be dead for good just yet anyway.

 

     He doesn’t even realize he’s physically manifested yet; sitting up is just as much of a chore as that he performed to live again.  He really hopes that’ll wear off, since he doesn’t think there’s really time for him to laze around and recover from having a sword rammed through his chest _again_ —which, come to think of, was getting _really_ tiring, and it was in the _exact same spot_ , c’mon! But it was wearing off pretty quickly, actually, and within a minute he was back on his feet, stretching, shaking stiffness that he hoped wasn’t rigor mortis or something like that from his limbs.

 

     He could do this.  He wasn’t out of the game yet.  Jack wasn’t going to be easy, as if!  But he couldn’t be _impossible_ either; it’d be really cheap if the one game that was impossible to win was the one that warped reality!

 

     So yeah, he could do this!  Rose was here now, so once he fixed her little grimdark problem he could get Dave and Jade and maybe they could all gang up on Jack—

 

     He can’t do this.

 

     The moment where he recognizes her prone figure and the moment where he connects the dots are very distinct.  Actually, the latter is more of a thick smear across several moments, like someone daubed a sample across half a dozen glass slides and he had to look at each on its own under a microscope and figure out the big picture.

 

     For some reason he’s surprised her blood and his are the same color, and he’s embarrassed at that thought because it’s not like she changed species or anything, even if her skin is gray and her eyes glow and she doesn’t speak English anymore for some reason and

 

and

 

     There just aren’t any words, and there’s almost a sense of just being tired.  His dad is already dead and Rose’s mom too except he’s not sure how to feel about that except bad, just bad, and now it’s not like he can just flake out on this one more sorrow and just _not_ feel

 

feel

 

     He worries for a moment he’s shutting down, because his brain keeps cutting out and he feels like he might be dizzy but he’s not, he thinks, and he’s faced with the momentous, immovable question like an insurmountable mountain in his path of _What does he do next?_

 

     He trapped on a precipice of eternity, unable to move and unable to stay, he can’t even think, and for some reason the word that comes to mind is _weird_ , it’s _weird_ that she’ll never talk to him again and he can’t even grasp that, he has to start smaller, but forever, never, is not an easy thing to wrap his mind around and Jesus, just yesterday he was teasing her, talking to her, and today an alien who had lived a billion years ago and right now had told him he was supposed to _marry_ this girl, which was the last thing he’d ever said to her he realized, and he’s not sure how to feel about that either.

 

He wonders where his dad’s body went.

 

He wonders where he is.

 

He wonders if he can fix this.

 

     He’s not dead, after all.  Death is maybe not so permanent as he thought and he can’t stop the bubble of hope that rises up and into his throat and he can’t _breathe_ because what if it doesn’t work, what if he does one thing wrong and screws up something else that could have worked instead but what if he only has a limited amount of time to fix this and he doesn’t know how long he’s been dead, maybe it’s been hours except her blood is still wet—

 

     But he doesn’t know what to _do_ damnit, no one ever told him all these stupid cheat codes like dying on a weird stone bed would make you godtier, that your dream self could be like a second life, that the dead didn’t always stay dead if you did… such and such. If you did… If you… _what?_

 

 _i’m not cut out for this i can’t do this rose is counting on me dave and jade are counting on me the whole universe is counting on me and here i am and i don’t know what to do there’s nothing i can do_

 

     But he can’t just leave, just turn and leave without doing something trying something and for some reason he can’t let go of the fact the last thing he said was that they were supposed to get married and he just means to give her a kiss goodbye with maybe some half-formed childish hope she’ll rise up like in a fairy tale but instead of a kiss he surges forward and out of himself and now he’s intangible again, he’s a hurricane a breeze a breath her breath but it’s hard, it’s a new voyage to the surface again through leagues of darkness with nothing but a draft of air to hold her aloft air that isn’t hers but she takes it anyway because it’s challenging enough already.  It takes her a moment to realize she’s corporeal once more; even opening her eyes takes strength she very nearly doesn’t have.

 

     But she does, and is rewarded with a lot of blue and glasses and “John…?”

 

     He’s running through his library of slides with his microscope again because that wasn’t going to work, it was supposed to be goodbye now and she still looks like she might slip away but she’s not and he can’t register this but she’s smiling and not a sly little smirk but she looks really happy and somehow the idea that she’s speaking English again registers before the thought that she’s alive, she’s okay, she’s alive and he did it and then he grins, unable to speak and she’s unable to get up and he’s so giddy that maybe he ended up giving her that kiss after all but it’s okay because she doesn’t seem to mind.


End file.
